“Bigger and Better”

Deuteronomy 26:1-11      Luke 4:1-13

February 21, 2010     First Sunday in Lent

First Congregational UCC/Reverend Deb Davis                  

     I’ve been trying to walk at the Y on most days over the past several months … and I’ve been seeing some of you there as well.

     To help me stay on that treadmill … to help me forget that I’m actually exercising … I put on a set of earphones as I walk … so I can watch TV.

     Now recently… I’ve switched from going to the Y in the mornings … to going in the afternoons … and so instead of watching CNN … I’ve switched to watching “Oprah” … a show, believe it or not, that I had never seen before my recent afternoons at the Y.

     Since I’ve been watching “Oprah” … I have learned about all kinds of things … so much that when grandson Tyler talked about Lady Gaga at dinner one night this past week … I knew exactly who he meant.

     But every now and then … I’ve been surprised by the depth of Oprah’s show … often the show has something important to say … and deals with important issues.

     And on one recent day there was one such show. Oprah interviewed a quiet, 40-ish-year-old man … who had a horrific story to tell.

     The story he told was his own story … a story about his own childhood … a story about years of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of a mentally ill mother … a story about neighbors and school personnel who suspected the truth but didn’t intervene … a story of how he worked to protect his younger sister from the abuse … a story about how he finally found the courage to tell when he was a young teen.

     Like so many other stories we have all heard … perhaps even when we consider our own, personal stories ... we wonder: “How does a child that has experienced so much harm to his or her soul … how does a child that has experienced such violence … ever repair that life?”

     And so that day on her television show … Oprah asked the man that question. “How,” she asked, “were you able to grow up and marry and function pretty normally in this world?”

     The man was quiet for a moment. And then he responded: “Because there is something bigger and better than us in this world … and that’s all I know.”

     Because there is something bigger and better than us in this world … and perhaps … that is all we need to know.

     On this past Wednesday the season of Lent began … and so for the next several weeks the church calendar invites us to step into a different rhythm … a rhythm of introspection … a rhythm of becoming more and more truthful about our own stories … a rhythm of finding where our story connects to God’s story in a deeper way.

     Lent, at base, is not a time for us to try and prove our piety or our goodness … it is not about what we can give up for the sake of giving something up … but rather Lent is a time for us to get honest with God … by first getting honest with ourselves … so that we might open ourselves to the transformative thing God wants to do in us … and through us.

     Because I will remind you of something you already know … that until we truly know our own story … until we find the courage to tell it honestly … first and foremost to ourselves … our lives will not be what God wants them to be. Because what we avoid imprisons us … enslaves us.

     Instead of denying where we are vulnerable … instead of denying the deep pain rooted in our souls … instead of denying the violence done to us … instead of denying any violence we may have done to others … instead of denying that we use unhealthy things to fill ourselves up so we will not feel the pain … … instead of all of that … Lent invites us to to step out of the denial … and become truthful storytellers … honest storytellers about our own lives … so that we might yet live lives filled with God’s abundance.

     This morning’s ancient story from Deuteronomy gets at this very issue … when Moses tells the Hebrew people to tell their story as they enter into the Promised Land … and to continue to tell their story year after year … so they don’t forget.

     You will remember that the Hebrew people’s ancestors had gone in to Egypt during a time of famine … and for awhile found sanctuary there. But eventually they became so numerous that the Pharaoh was worried … and he enslaved the Hebrew people … and they were mistreated and abused by their captors. This text tells us they were treated harshly and afflicted.

     And so the people cried out to God and God rescued them … rescued them not through an abracadabra-kind of immediate fix for their lives … rather rescued them by first removing them from what enslaved them … and then giving them 40 years in the wilderness to heal … to get used to being free … to get to know … once again … this God that was bigger and better than anything else they knew … … all of that … before they entered into lives of abundance.

     This story from Deuteronomy is a story for Lent … even for our Lent all these centuries later … because it is a story that gives us a metaphor for our own lives … a story that says yes, we may be wounded … there may be demons lurking in our present or our past … our hope was broken, trust failed, self-esteem collapsed, dreams of relationship, job, and future came apart. Yes, we have known enslavement in Egypt.

     But we also have been taught something else … that there is something bigger and better than us in this world … that there is this amazing God who has a passion for making us whole again … a God who has a passion for making us able to enter into community, to lead sacred lives … resolving differences and finding common ground, drawing out the best in ourselves and others.

     There is this God that is bigger and better than us … and that’s all we need to know.

     And so in this text … we don’t just hear the echo of an ancient story … we may well hear our own story as well … we hear the way God was and is and will be with God’s people … and even with us.

     When victims of oppression and suffering cry out to God … God hears them and sees their troubles and comes to save.

     And it is that liberation that allows us to live fully human lives … that liberation that lets that man interviewed by Oprah … heal the horrific brokenness of his life … that liberation that allows some of us to even be here this morning.

     In this text … Moses then goes a step further. He also tells the people that those to whom this gift has been given … those who have personally experienced this liberation … must present their own gifts of gratitude to God … thereby acknowledging that which is bigger and better.

     And then this text makes it clear … once we have been liberated by our God … we not only show our gratitude through the giving of first fruits and remembering our story … we also show our gratitude by including the whole community in our joy and celebration … even those who weren’t promised the land … even the Levites and the sojourners – or aliens - among us.

     In other words … we are called to continue to give these first fruits and tell our story in an inclusive community of God’s people … an inclusive community where all are welcomed … where all are invited in … where all are seen as children of God. 

     And by doing that … we, too, offer liberation … God is able to work through us … to help others learn the truth of their own lives … to help them cry out to God for help.

      We walk with them as they heal all that is broken … … we do all of that … because we have experienced something bigger and better than ourselves in this world.

     And right there … right there … is where the devil lies to Jesus in our second text.  The devil would have Jesus believe … would have us believe … that we are the biggest and best thing in the world.

     That’s always where evil … where the world lies to us …by telling us that it’s all about us … all about what we think we need … all about the power the world can provide to us through money and status and achievement and degrees … through the next drink or the next affair … the next shopping spree … the next act of revenge … … all things that in the end will only enslave us … all things that can never and will never … set us free.

     And so Jesus responds to the lie with the truth … he responds with other stories from the book of Deuteronomy … scripture that he knows so well … these stories that speak of a God who is bigger and better than anything else we know … and so he can respond that this life isn’t about accumulating the world’s power … rather it’s about recognizing God’s power … the power of love and healing and accompaniment.

     We need time and solitude to begin to work all this out … and I suspect that’s why so many of us run so fast … why we are afraid to slow down … because the truth might sneak up on us.

     But that’s exactly why Lent invites us into a different rhythm … Lent challenges us to take some time … to find that solitude … to do this work … to speak our own truth.

     This work of Lent is often painful … it is thorny … that’s why Judie Sagendorf said she put all those thorns on our Lenten table … because this Lenten work requires that we are both vulnerable to the truth of our lives … and fearless in opening ourselves to healing.

     But … we can be sure … all the while we do this thorny work … through all of our Lenten days and all of our other days … that we will be tended by angels … tended by a God who offers endless care … and eventually … eventually … we will find ourselves more fully alive … and more free … than we could ever have imagined.

      And so my friends ... we don’t give up chocolate in Lent to say we have given something up … unless … unless that can help us get to a deeper truth about ourselves and about our God.

     So if giving up chocolate won’t do it … then how do we begin this work … how do we begin getting honest with ourselves and with God … when for so long we have been unable and unwilling to do so?

     One place where you might begin … is to think about what gives you joy … or peace … or offers you beauty … or makes you feel loved? 

     Maybe it’s dancing … or watching the birds on your feeder … perhaps it’s doing social justice work … or it’s quiet mediation … or it’s making art. Think about that … … bring something to mind.

     And then know that that may well be the place where you are already connecting with God … that may be your place to begin.

     Take that place … and enlarge it … see it as prayer … let it prove to you that you are not alone in this world … that there is something bigger and better than you that under girds your life with a powerful love … and let that give you the courage … to begin to be honest with yourself and God about one thing in your life … one place of pain or shame or guilt or sorrow or regret … take that one thing to God.

     That’s the work of Lent. Amen.